Senior Uzbek figures banned from entering EU

EU foreign ministers this week banned 12 of Uzbekistan’s top government figures from entering the Union’s territory, in an arguably belated protest over the massacre of up to 500 people in May.

The ban is aimed at “those individuals who are directly responsible for the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by Uzbek security forces in Andijan”.

Top of the banned list is the country’s Interior Minister Zakirjon Almatov.

But he was already on EU soil at the time the ban came into effect: Almatov is receiving medical treatment at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover, treatment which cannot be matched in his home country.

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